


Blazing Bright

by eucatastrophe__x



Series: Light of my Life [4]
Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Awkwardness, Barebacking, Coming Out, Dating, Dentists, Felching, First Dates, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Head Injury, Hospitalization, Lee Pace's Sex Move, M/M, Medical Procedures, Medicinal Drug Use, Out of Character, Oversharing, Rimming, Secret Relationship, Wall Sex, Wisdom Teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:04:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5121002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eucatastrophe__x/pseuds/eucatastrophe__x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee had been wondering, for a while, exactly when and how he and Richard would start to tell people outside their families and immediate employ about their relationship.</p><p>Needless to say, he didn’t expect the first step to come about because of a trip to the dentist gone wrong.</p><p>And yet that was exactly how it happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Mr Pace?”

The look on the nurse’s face told him that something was very, very wrong.

He jumped up from his seat in the waiting room, the magazine he’d been idly flicking through falling to the floor.

“I’m going to need you to come with me, please.”

It had all begun with something so mundane.

“My jaw hurts,” Richard had announced, apropos of nothing, during one of their many lazy evenings on the couch.

Lee just shook his head.

“I told you eating all those caramels would be a bad idea.”

He’d picked them up at the grocery store on a whim, having never seen them before, but clearly hadn’t paid enough attention to the adjective “chewy” emblazoned across the front. Chewy had been the understatement of the century. He had abandoned them after a couple of fruitless minutes, writing them off as too much effort, but Richard – as always – took their virtually impenetrable hardness as a challenge, and didn’t rest until he’d demolished the entire box.

“It would serve you right if they’d rotted all your teeth.”

“Wow, aren’t we Mr Caring and Compassionate today?” Richard teased, throwing a pillow at him. “But no, not that kind of sore. Here, have a look.”

Lee scooted closer and reached for his phone, turning on the flashlight app before inspecting Richard’s open mouth (and wondering if this was one of the signs that a relationship was Officially Serious).

“Bottom on the left?”

“Agh,” Richard gargled, which Lee interpreted as agreement.

“Yeah, it looks kind of red and sore right at the back. This the first time it’s been hurting?”

Richard shrugged, only elaborating once Lee had finished his inspection. “I think it’s been a little bit sore for a while, but I’m just particularly noticing it tonight. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“Try a salt water rinse and we’ll see what it looks like in the morning,” Lee suggested – and he’d thought that that would be the end of it.

But four hours later, he awoke to the crackling of painkillers being popped out of their foil.

“Rich, what’s wrong?” he mumbled, rolling over to the sight of Richard slugging down water with his medicine and holding an ice pack to his cheek.

“I think I need to go to the dentist.”

Lee had recommended his own place, one wing of an extremely discreet medical facility in a nondescript Manhattan high-rise that catered to people who valued their privacy, even when they just needed a filling or two. Visiting always made Lee feel a bit like he was in a spy movie – the disguised car park entrances, the lift that required an identification number, the fact that even when you made it as far as reception it wasn’t entirely clear that you were in a tiny private hospital – it could have been any other business, the room all pristine with comfortable couches and receptionists with groomed hair and pretty floral dresses.

He’d explained all this to Richard, of course, after calling to make an appointment on his behalf, and he had left the apartment with an amused and slightly excited grin on his face (which Lee considered to be an extremely entertaining mindset to be in before visiting the dentist).

And despite his best efforts to be supportive, Lee had laughed like a drain when he had returned home and announced that he needed to get his wisdom teeth taken out.

“Rich, you’re meant to have problems with your wisdoms in your twenties – you’re about fifteen years late.”

Richard offered him a self-deprecating smile. “Late bloomer?”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“I’m glad you’re so sympathetic,” he said drily, “I’ve never had a tooth out before, and I’m kind of nervous.”

“Is it just the one?”

“No, the dentist said he might as well do all of them, since they’re all potentially as messed up as each other, so this doesn’t happen again.”

Lee winced, the memory of having his own pulled still fresh in his mind even after a decade or so.

“That face really isn’t comforting me, by the way,” Richard added, and Lee snickered again. “Sorry, baby. It’ll be fine. I can come with you, if you want? And then I’ll bring you home and make you nice soft things to eat and wait on you hand and foot, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Richard conceded, some of his visible anxiousness draining away.

“Come on, let’s make a shopping list, and we can go and get lots of little luxuries – I’ll make you dinner the night before if you tell me what you want.”

As he’d hoped, the prospect of a nice meal (particularly one that was going to be prepared for him without him having to leave the house) cheered Richard up further.

“Anything I want?”

“Anything you want,” Lee confirmed, “and if you want to get drunk as well to take your mind off it, then – actually, no, on second thoughts, that might not be the best idea,” he realised, thinking out loud, not wanting to find out what would happen if Richard was sedated after a night of heavy drinking.

Richard just smirked.

So they’d enjoyed a night of good food (and a limited amount of good wine, Lee policing the amount in Richard’s glass sternly), followed by comfortable, lazy sex. Richard had initiated it, winding an arm around Lee’s waist as he stacked the dishes.

“Leave them,” he’d murmured, the smoulder in his tone compelling to say the least, and Lee had obliged, letting Richard tug him back to the couch and straddle him, kissing him slowly and grinding down on him until his mind had gone blissfully blank, then shucking down his trousers and sucking him off unhurriedly, like he had all the time in the world. The sex itself had continued in that same fashion – save for the mad dash to the bedroom to grab the lube – stretched along the length of the extra-long couch, pressed chest to chest and savouring every leisurely thrust. And they’d passed out in each other’s arms afterwards, having stumbled into bed in a post-orgasmic haze, and when they woke up in the morning Richard was still too sated to worry about his upcoming appointment at all.

Yes, it had been a resounding success.

Except now it wasn’t.

Because they were here, and surely the procedure should have been done by now, and the nurse had her serious face on as she led him down the corridor, and it was not looking good at all.

“He’s not… dead?” he choked out, hoping against hope that he was jumping to the most implausible conclusion. The appalling prospect of losing Richard aside (especially now that their relationship had really found its footing and things were going so incredibly well) – death by wisdom tooth extraction. What a way to go.

“No, no, no, definitely not,” she reassured him hastily, and he felt the tension drain away with every repetition, “it’s just… well, do you know if he’s ever been sedated before?”

“I – um, no, no idea, sorry. I know he hasn’t had any teeth out, though,” he said (stupidly – of course the dental team would already know that), “why?”

“Do you know if he’s allergic to any drugs?”

“No idea,” he repeated, “but – can you just – what’s going on? Why are you asking me these things?”

The nurse gave him a confused look. “Well, we just assumed you would have some knowledge of his medical history, and you’d be able to tell us if he’d forgotten to mention anything important to us. You’re his emergency contact, after all.”

“I – what?” Lee sputtered, completely taken aback, by both the words and the neutrality with which she’d said them.

“We require all new patients to fill out a questionnaire with their personal details – it’s a long-standing practice, Mr Pace, and I’m sure you did the same when you first came to visit us. The form requires the name of an emergency contact, and Mr Armitage put yours. Is that a problem?”

“No,” he muttered, looking down in an attempt to hide the broad grin that was spreading over his face despite the apparent severity of the situation, “it’s not a problem at all.”

It wasn’t a problem.

It was a triumph.

And to think – not that long ago, the thought of publicly associating himself with Lee (even by writing his name on a confidential form at a notoriously discreet medical facility) would have sent Richard into a complete tailspin.

Lee knew, because he’d seen it happen before.

He hadn’t understood, at the time, that the pressure was building for Richard. He didn’t know about the conversation with his parents in which he’d confessed (and it was a confession, after all, given his parents’ attitude and the perhaps misleading impression that Richard had given them over the past few years regarding his sexuality) that they were together. He didn’t know about the date with Laura – not until it was too late, not until everything had come roaring to a head, and then the pictures were the only thing he could think about, eyes fixed unblinkingly on his computer screen until they started to water.

It had all happened so fast that it had left his head spinning. One minute Richard was walking through the door, smiling brightly with hands full of Chinese takeout, and only a few minutes later he was storming back out with a bag of clothes, the door slamming closed with horrifying finality.

And Lee – well, he did the only thing he could think of, as foolish as it was: in an attempt to forget, he drank.

It had been the blackest week of his life.

Every time he came to, he would find himself straining, listening for noises that weren’t there – the sound of Richard making breakfast or tea or humming as he folded the laundry or loaded the dishwasher or the periodic rustling whisper of him turning the pages of a book. But the apartment was always empty – just like it had been since that awful night.

After the first 24 hours, the terrible thought had occurred to him that maybe Richard wasn’t coming back. Maybe this was it. Maybe – oh, but he wouldn’t.

Would he?

Would he go home without saying goodbye to Lee or telling him it was over?

Lee turned the bedroom upside down, but he couldn’t find Richard’s passport anywhere – and the terror just prompted him to drink more.

He woke in a different part of the house every morning – the couch, Richard’s side of the bed (he remembered, at least, cradling his pillow and crying like he would never stop until sleep provided a welcome reprieve), the kitchen floor, and the – mercifully empty – bathtub. And his waking hours were all spent in much the same fashion: staring at the pictures of Richard and Laura until he was quite sure he’d be able to draw them from memory, down to the finest detail. Imagining Richard picking up a woman (maybe Laura, maybe a stranger, maybe more than one) and taking her back to wherever he was staying and fucking her, passionate and overwhelming and yet conventional and easy and expected and right and everything that being with Lee clearly wasn’t. And wondering if it was over, if it was all over, before they’d really had a chance to begin.

He would find out later that he and Richard had spent the week in much the same way, reminiscing in a drunken fog but each quite unable to make contact with the other – and he had never been quite so pathetically thankful in his life as he was when he opened the door in the middle of the night to find Richard on the other side of it.

There was a small part of him that didn’t really want to talk about what had happened – but he’d considered, in his more sober moments, that on the off-chance that Richard did come home, they wouldn’t be able to brush his terror of coming out under the rug again. If they did, there would just be more and more of these incidents, and in the end, it would destroy them both.

And he’d tried to articulate those things, and he’d been doing an okay job of it, until Richard’s phone had interrupted his train of thought, and then Richard himself had interrupted it even further by dropping a bombshell, his tone so calm that it left Lee reeling.

But he’d done it. He’d told his parents that he was in love with Lee and that wasn’t going to change, and his mother appeared to have accepted it (or at least begun to, and in a grudging way – but that was good enough for Lee).

If that wasn’t enough, he’d told Amanda (and, over the course of the next few days, Sarah and all the rest of his team). Amanda’s reaction had been the most memorable – probably because Richard had left her such a casual voicemail telling her that by the way, he was in love with a man and had been in a relationship for months and they were living together (no, not just in the platonic sense) and sorry for not telling her sooner. She had turned up at their apartment the next morning, interrupting their breakfast with a face like thunder. Lee had tried to make himself scarce, but failed miserably. She sat them down on the couch and lectured Richard for ten minutes straight about hiding things from her – before bursting into tears, lunging at him, wrapping him in a huge hug, telling him how thrilled she was that he’d found someone and promising to stop trying to set him up with women. And god, the utter relief on Richard’s face as he hugged her back gratefully, like he couldn’t believe she wasn’t screaming at him for being dirty and perverted and ruining his whole career before resigning in disgust, made Lee want to shower her with every gift under the sun.

And Richard was positively blossoming, something confident unfurling inside his chest a little more every time he had the conversation.

It was everything Lee had ever wanted.

And things had just kept getting better.

Their first official date – and how strange it was to call it that when they were already living together and knew each other inside out – had taken place not much later, and was a memory that Lee would always treasure, not least as a sign of how much more comfortable Richard was becoming in his own skin and the unbelievable pace at which he was doing so.

He’d insisted on picking Lee up, leaving him to get ready by himself before returning at seven on the dot with an excited smile, an armful of flowers and a box of extravagant chocolates “just because.” He’d taken Lee to the restaurant/bar where he’d spent the better part of that ill-advised week drowning his misery in scotch (which, in turn, had been a surprise, since Lee knew he didn’t like the drink at all – he really had been hell-bent on punishing himself for his behaviour). The bartender had greeted him with a broad, excited smile, her gaze flickering between the two of them hopefully.

“Is this…?”

“It is,” Richard acknowledged, lacing their fingers together in an extremely unsubtle manner, the most overt display of affection Lee had ever experienced in a public place.

He savoured it.

“So… Can we get a table for two?”

They’d been seated right at the back, in a secluded corner where Richard made good on all his promises – ordering a huge slice of cheesecake with two forks for dessert and letting Lee battle him for the last mouthful, looking at him with such overwhelming adoration that it made him want to cry (or dance with euphoria – one or the other), even scooting his seat around so he was next to Lee rather than opposite him and running his palm up and down his thigh as they conversed, culminating in a cheeky squeeze of what was most definitely _not_ his thigh and the most mischievous grin Lee had ever seen him wear.

On his way back from the bathroom after the meal, Lee had run into the bartender, who had commented about how glad she was that everything had worked out. He’d been half-joking when he’d first said to Richard that he wanted to give her a tip for convincing him to come home, but standing in front of her now, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to empty his wallet, stuffing all the bills he had into her startled hands.

“Take it,” he pleaded, “I’m sure he wouldn’t have come back if it wasn’t for you. You changed my life – both of our lives – and I could give you everything I own and it still wouldn’t be enough to show you how grateful I am. I mean it.”

Richard had tipped ridiculously as well, of course (he’d insisted on paying for both of them, since he was the one taking Lee on the date), sharing a few quiet words with the bartender before they left. Lee pretended not to notice the way that they both kept looking over at him with matching fond smiles on their faces.

And Lee – well, his grin had somehow bypassed fond and gone straight to deliriously ecstatic. And it didn’t fade after they left the restaurant, the cool spring air a welcome change from the warmth inside. Richard had suggested that they walk home, even though it was a ludicrously long way, reasoning that they’d eaten so much that the exercise would do them the world of good – plus, they both had long legs, so it wasn’t as if it would take hours.

Lee, of course, wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to stroll the streets of Manhattan hand in hand without Richard having a meltdown.

Richard was so pleased with himself. He didn’t say it, of course, but it was written all over his face. Lee suspected it was an equal mix of the confidence boost of having gone on a date without the sky falling in and the knowledge that he’d spent the whole evening riling Lee up: the wandering thigh caresses had been the most overt act, but by no means the only one. Knowing full well that Lee had a weakness for his hands (though god, to say that it went both ways was the understatement of the century, especially if that hasty bathroom hand job during the press tour had been anything to go by), he’d spent a disproportionate amount of the evening fiddling with his cutlery and the stem of his wine glass, covering Lee’s hand with his atop the table and grazing his knuckles with the pads of his fingers, even collecting the last smudge of cheesecake filling left on the plate with one fingertip and cleaning it off obnoxiously with his tongue, smirking as Lee’s brain visibly shorted out.

Whatever the cause, it had him relaxed enough to hold Lee’s hand in public, and that was all that mattered.

“I had a really good time tonight,” he said earnestly, breaking the comfortable silence, and Lee felt his smile stretch across his face even more until his cheeks were burning.

“Me too.”

“Although,” he added casually, “the night’s not over yet.”

“Oh? What did you have in mind?” He wouldn’t say no to coffee or ice cream on the way home, stuffed as he was from the meal, especially when Richard was so bright and happy and pink-nosed from the night air.

Except apparently, that wasn’t what Richard had in mind at all.

“Come on, I’ll give you a preview.”

Before Lee had even had time to register the response – or realise that he’d grossly misinterpreted Richard’s innuendo – he was being bundled into a deserted alleyway, Richard pressing him to the brick wall and teasing his mouth open with his tongue, hands burrowing under his coat to grasp at his hips and their beards catching on each other in that delicious way that made Lee never want to shave again.

“God, Rich,” he gasped, “you really are full of surprises tonight.”

“Good,” Richard mumbled, and the chill of the bricks was seeping through his coat but he couldn’t care, not now, not when Richard was rocking against him like this, with slow but thoroughly indecent rolls of his hips that felt distinctly like a promise. There was something so illicit about it: maybe kissing in an alley was nothing special for most – normal – couples, but this was them and it was so new and exciting and dangerous and they could be seen at any moment and that would always have been the most significant of deterrents for Richard except now suddenly it wasn’t.

“I changed my mind,” Lee added, pulling away as his lungs started to protest and gasping for air, taking a second to admire Richard’s flushed cheeks and swollen lips and dark, wanting eyes, “I think walking is a terrible idea.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

The cab ride back to the apartment was pure torture, sitting a respectable distance from each other, and Lee could tell from the look on Richard’s face that he was in exactly the same boat. By the time they got home, his hands were shaking so much from arousal and adrenaline that it took three attempts for him to get the key in the lock (of course, it hadn’t helped that Richard was all over him like a rash, hands under his coat again and lips on his neck, pressing little kisses to each of the freckles that he’d mapped so many times before).

He’d barely closed the door before Richard was crowding his space again, pushing his coat off his shoulders but bypassing his blazer and shirt completely, going straight for the belt and the fly and his briefs until he was standing there half-naked, fabric pooled around his ankles, and quite unable to care at all. And Richard didn’t hesitate, dropping to his knees, and in only a few seconds the head of Lee’s cock was nudging the back of his throat and Jesus, he was really giving it his all, and it was so good – too good –

God, it was an effort to open his eyes and unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, but the prospect of finishing so embarrassingly quickly was too real for him to stay quiet.

“Rich, stop,” he pleaded, “unless you want me to come before we’ve even made it to the bed, stop.”

Richard did so – but only to shed his own pants, reaching for his wallet en route, and producing a little foil packet of lube.

“I don’t want to make it to the bed.”

“What?” His mind was sluggish – something about having the length of Richard’s body pressed against him, coupled with his still-imminent orgasm – and he couldn’t quite grasp what Richard was hinting at until he spelled it out for him.

“Right here,” Richard elaborated, “I want you to fuck me right here.”

Lee blinked twice, slowly, as the words slowly filtered through (the process was further hindered by the fact that Richard had reached for his cock again and was working him with a slow, casual fist that wasn’t going to get him off but nevertheless felt really fucking good) – and then the sight in front of him swam back into focus: Richard’s flushed cheeks and mussed hair, mouth pink and swollen and lips shiny with saliva and precome, and dark eyes fixed on Lee’s as he waited for a response.

And Lee had a response for him, all right.

He slid his hands around to Richard’s ass without warning and lifted him up, taking a giant step forward until Richard’s back was pressed against the wall and he was winding his arms around Lee’s neck, fingers in his hair and blatant arousal written all over his face that only became more pronounced as Lee tilted his hips to increase the pressure on both their cocks, trapped between them, and the involuntary moan that escaped Richard’s lips told Lee that he was very definitely on the right track.

“Like this?” he asked, repeating the movement, and wringing out the same sound each time.

“Oh, fuck, _yes,_ just like this.”

Well, Lee didn’t need to be told twice.

He was hasty in his preparation (Richard opening the lube packet with trembling hands and squeezing it onto Lee’s fingers before letting his head loll back at the first press of a fingertip against his entrance) – perhaps almost too hasty, going by the grunt that Richard let out when he pushed inside, a sound he knew to indicate that he was just on the wrong side of the pleasure/pain divide.

“Sorry, baby,” he murmured, “I’ll go slow.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

Richard rewrapped his legs around Lee’s waist, squeezing tight to prove his point before pulling Lee in for another kiss, the aggressiveness taking them both aback. Lee couldn’t help but moan as Richard’s tongue filled his mouth, settling into the same rhythm as the deep, forceful thrusts of his cock, and he grabbed both of Richard’s hands and pressed them to the wall with his own, palm to palm and fingers intertwined, something dominant unfurling in his belly at the complete control he had over the situation and the dull thuds of Richard’s body against plaster.

“Faster,” Richard begged, the word muffled against Lee’s lips before he bent his head to claim bare skin, fingers reaching for the collar of the shirt he hadn’t bothered to remove and teeth sinking into the slope between neck and shoulder, letting Lee exhale shakily before he pressed his forehead against the wall and did just as he’d asked.

It didn’t last long – it certainly wasn’t the laborious memorisation that Lee liked to think post first date sex should be, and they were still-half dressed, coats and shoes and trousers scattered on the floor – and yet Richard came with a hoarse shout after just a few twists of Lee’s wrist, his other hand still pinned in place, riding it out for what felt like minutes, and then somehow still finding the energy to keep his legs locked around Lee’s hips, gasping endearments interspersed with more sucks and licks and bites of his neck until he too fell over the edge with a roaring in his ears and a sob of Richard’s name.

“Oh, fuck, I love you.”

Richard just grinned – he didn’t need to say it back. Lee knew. He knew every time he looked at him – reaching up with a trembling hand to push Lee’s damp hair off his face.

“I think I like this whole dating thing.”

“Well, here’s to many more.”

And there had been – well, not many, but some. In fact, there would have been one the coming weekend, had Richard not started complaining out of the blue about the pain in his jaw that had brought them here.

The nurse stopped in front of a closed door, so suddenly that Lee kept walking, taking two or three steps before his mind caught up and he doubled back in embarrassment. “Sorry, what was that?”

“He – well.” She paused to clear her throat and, apparently, summon her most professional tone. “Mr Pace, wisdom tooth extractions are carried out by IV sedation. This means that the patient is not unconscious, but will have limited to no recollection of the procedure afterwards.”

Another pause, this one longer.

“Mr Armitage suffered an adverse reaction to the drugs we used to sedate him.”

Ingrid.

Her name was Ingrid, according to the name badge on her chest. 

He figured he should know her name, since she appeared to be about to turn his life upside down.

“What sort of adverse reaction?” he prompted – albeit unwillingly – imagining the worst. He wished she would just blurt it out, let him have it, then backtrack and explain properly, rather than the methodical approach she clearly wanted to employ.

“It – hmm. Maybe that’s the wrong word,” she mused, “in the beginning, at least, it wasn’t so much adverse as extremely delayed. He wasn’t responding to the sedation at all – certainly not to the level we would need to begin the extraction process. We always allow a couple of minutes for it to take effect, but in Mr Armitage’s case, it didn’t. So… we gave him more. Significantly more. And eventually it did start to work, and we did successfully remove all four wisdom teeth without complications.”

“But?” he prompted, because there was clearly more to the tale – she wouldn’t be standing here looking so sombre if there wasn’t.

“Mr Armitage didn’t lose consciousness throughout the procedure – which would be the worst case scenario in these circumstances – but when it came time to reverse the sedation, it became clear that it had had much more of an impact than we’d realised. He appears to have a very slow reaction time to intravenous drugs and as a result had been extremely heavily sedated.”

“Right,” he said slowly, digesting her words – except the anxiety on her face hadn’t cleared, and that meant there was still more.

“We didn’t realise how affected he still was until he got up from the chair. He had been telling us he was fine. You understand, Mr Pace, that patients often struggle with their speech after sedation, so the fact that he was slurring his words didn’t raise any particular red flags for us. And he was quite insistent that he was ready to leave. But…”

“Damn it, just tell me what happened.”

“He fell,” she blurted, “Mr Pace, he fell and hit his head – hard.”

And there it was.

“What did he hit his head on?” he asked, trying desperately to keep his voice calm.

“The tray. The edge of the stainless steel tray. He fell forwards, and struck his temple. And then, um, he sort of bounced backwards off it and hit the back of his head on the floor as well.”

Christ almighty.

It was only meant to be a trip to the dentist – nice and straightforward, all done by mid-morning – and yet Richard would be leaving the hospital more injured than he’d been when he’d arrived. The irony was not lost on Lee.

“So… What’s happening now? Is he awake?”

“He is awake,” she admitted, “but he is still experiencing some… side effects. We just don’t know if they should be attributed to the sedation or the impact of him hitting his head.”

“And I can see him? That’s why you’ve brought me here?”

She’d barely begun to nod before he was pushing the door open.

Sure enough, Richard was there, lying back in the chair, all limp and boneless. His face was paler than it had been when Lee had last seen him, and one temple was covered with a fresh white bandage. Another nurse in an identical uniform had been keeping an eye on him and sidled out wordlessly as Lee crouched next to the chair.

“Rich,” he said softly, pressing his fingers to the back of Richard’s unmoving (and surprisingly cold) hand, “Rich.”

Richard opened his eyes slowly, squinting at the light, looking around the room curiously but unable to focus on anything. But that wasn’t what alarmed Lee so much – no, it was the deep blackness of his pupils, blown so wide that they’d nearly swallowed his irises whole.

Lee knew what that look meant.

“He’s still high as a fucking kite,” he said to Ingrid accusingly, too angry to be embarrassed for swearing, “how much ‘too much’ did you give him? And look at him, for god’s sake – how the hell could you not tell that he wasn’t okay?”

“As I said, Mr Pace, he was doing a very convincing impression of being okay,” she explained, “and we don’t –”

“Baby,” Richard slurred, “hi.”

His frustration receded ever so slightly at the sight of Richard’s wide, goofy grin (even if his gaze still seemed to be sliding in and out of focus).

“Hi, Rich,” he murmured, “how are you doing?”

“I’m doing great,” he beamed, “how are _you_ doing?” He moved his jaw as little as possible as he spoke, huge wads of cotton stuffed between his teeth to put pressure on the holes in his gums. (It was probably a good sign that he was aware enough to know to do that – Lee didn’t like to consider the alternative, but thought that it had the potential to be messy to say the least.)

“Better now that you’re awake,” he admitted, smoothing a hand over Richard’s hair before looking up at the relieved nurse. (He could only assume that she was glad he wasn’t shouting the house down and threatening to sue – no, while those thoughts were loitering in the back of his mind, he was much more preoccupied with the fact that Richard was awake and alive and moderately coherent and yes, thank god, maybe it wasn’t going to be too much of a disaster after all.)

“So – now what?”

“Well, we’ve called one of the doctors in our little neuro team, and because he hit his head so hard, they’d like to examine him and then keep him under observation for a few hours to check for concussion symptoms. Just to be on the safe side. As soon as he’s ready to get up, we’ll pop him in a wheelchair and get you both into a private room. You’re welcome to stay with him, of course, Mr Pace.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, wanting to find fault with her approach but quite unable to do so. “Do you think you can stand?” he asked Richard, who was now staring intently at the ceiling, mouth hanging open in what looked like awe as his eyes flickered over the posters taped up there – forests, beaches, and other landscapes that were presumably designed to relax patients and distract them from having teeth forcibly wrenched from their gums. (They’d clearly been a resounding success for Richard, who was still taken with them to say the least, only registering Lee’s question when he shook his shoulder slightly.)

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. If you promise to catch me if I fall,” he answered with another beam – and when he stood he did in fact fall, dramatically, against Lee’s chest in a fake swoon. “Whoops,” he giggled, letting Lee bundle him into the wheelchair while gazing up at him adoringly (though Lee took the fact that he could actually gaze again and stay focused on something as a very positive sign.) 

He was too big for Ingrid to push, so that job fell to Lee. It was all going smoothly, and Richard was keeping quiet and enjoying the ride, until – until he wasn’t anymore.

He twisted his head to look back at Lee, still wearing that same drugged, adoring expression, and then out it popped.

“I love you so much.”

“I know, Rich,” he responded, trying to keep his tone nice and neutral, like the words meant nothing other than friendship.

Because when it came to their relationship, there was a line – at least, Lee had assumed there was a line. Richard’s parents were one thing, Amanda another, and the bartender from that terrible week was understandable in a way as well. But this?

Surely this was a step too far.

Apparently sedated Richard did not agree.

“Look at him,” he added, now addressing Ingrid, “isn’t he the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen?”

“He is pretty beautiful,” she conceded with an embarrassed grin that made Lee wonder if she wasn’t just saying it to indulge him, and god, that made it so much worse.

“Mmm,” Richard hummed happily, “and he’s all mine.”

Lee had been wondering if he could brush off Richard’s comments with a laugh, pretend that he didn’t know what he was saying – but this, coupled with the proclamations of endearment (and, shit, Lee realised, the concerned smoothing of his hair minutes before – he hadn’t even considered that he could be giving things away, since he was so preoccupied with Richard being awake), would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind as to the nature of their relationship.

Still, if he kept him quiet, maybe he could convincingly write the affection off as that of very close friends.

Yes, maybe Richard would pipe down and leave it there.

Or maybe… maybe he was only just getting started.

“You know what else? He’s got the most beautiful hands.” Richard twisted around in his seat to pat one of said hands, both of which were rapidly growing damp with embarrassment around the plastic handles of the wheelchair. “Really, really sexy hands. Especially when he’s wearing that watch. He knows how much it turns me on.”

“Richard,” Lee chided, “stop talking.”

“And his mouth, god, he has the prettiest mouth,” he continued, blithely ignoring Lee’s pleas, “just look at it, all… pretty.”

It could be worse, all things considered, because Richard was at least managing to keep things quite abstract.

“And he knows how to use it, too, if you know what I mean.”

And then he wasn’t.

“Oh my god,” Lee groaned quietly, a fresh wave of mortification crashing over him. The relationship was bad enough (at least from Richard’s perspective), but delving into the intricacies of their sex life was definitely something else – and a place that Lee, long comfortable with his sexuality, definitely didn’t like to linger in when discussing romances with his family or closest friends.

“And I swear the sex is the best I’ve ever had. This man,” he proclaimed, half-turning again to point a finger at Lee – just as a handful of doctors and nurses rounded the corner, eyeing the three of them with interest and most definitely within earshot, given the volume of Richard’s voice, “is a god in the bedroom.”

If Lee was embarrassed, Ingrid was even more so (though, judging by the way he could see her gnawing on her lip, she was also trying not to burst out laughing). She had sped up her pace as he’d continued to ramble, clearly just as anxious as Lee was to get Richard behind closed doors where no one else could hear him.

“Actually, not just in the bedroom,” he mused, “remember, babe? Our first official date? When you did me –”

“And here we are,” Ingrid interrupted, before he could give any further detail, stopping in front of a door to a private room and pushing it open. Lee manhandled Richard onto the bed – the process made even more difficult by the fact that Richard kept trying to bury his face in his neck and cling to him like a small child, all uncooperative limbs and triumphant little sniggers – but eventually he was lying down and blinking up at them obediently, clearly having lost his previous train of thought.

Lee was grateful to say the least.

“Right – call button is here, bathroom’s just through there, and there’s a vending machines with snacks just around the corner. The neuro doctor will be in to check on his head injury in a moment, so just sit tight until then.”

He followed her out, ignoring the mournful whine his disappearance earned from Richard.

“Excuse me, um, Ingrid? Can I talk to you for a moment? In private?”

The look on her face told him she’d been expecting this.

“I know what you’re going to say, Mr Pace, and you don’t need to worry in the slightest.”

But he did.

He had all the reason in the world to worry.

Because the more people that found out about their relationship, the greater the chance that it would end up being leaked to the rest of the world. And a few dates aside, Lee knew, unequivocally, that Richard still wasn’t ready to handle that level of scrutiny. He would resent Lee for bringing him here, and he would resent himself for blurting out personal details while still half-sedated – but most of all, he would resent himself for being in love with a man because it was shameful and wrong.

Lee was starting to break down those long-held views, it was true, but they still had a long way to go.

And if he had to pay off a nurse to make her keep her mouth shut, then so be it.

Except that wasn’t what she had to say at all.

“I was one of six people from my class to find a nursing job in the year after graduating. I’m paid well here, and they pay the interest on my student loans on top of my base salary. The work is incredibly varied, and I don’t spend my time – well, that much of my time – changing bedpans and helping old men shower like some of my friends. I have no interest in throwing any of that away to make a quick buck.”

“But –”

“And,” she continued, her expression and tone so serious that she couldn’t be being anything other than honest, “my own moral views on how wrong it would be to share another person’s private information aside, I know exactly what would happen if I did. I would lose my job immediately. The people whose privacy I’d breached would sue the hospital, and they would sue me personally. The hospital would make a third party claim against me to try and escape liability, and it would sue me itself. I can’t afford a lawyer – not the kind of lawyer I’d need for a case like this. I’d be bankrupted, but I’d still have my student loans. And not only would I be out of a job, but I’d probably end up having my registration cancelled, so I’d never be able to work again. Even if I didn’t, do you think another hospital would hire a nurse who’d been fired for breaching patient confidentiality? So no, Mr Pace, that’s why I say you don’t need to worry in the slightest. Because everyone here is in exactly the same boat as me. That’s why you pay to come here – because you know that everything that goes on within these walls will never get out.”

“Right,” he said dumbly, more than a little ashamed of jumping to conclusions as quickly as he had. Not everyone was out to sell them to the tabloids; he knew that. He just had to keep reminding himself. (Damn, maybe some of Richard’s paranoia was starting to rub off on him – and wouldn’t that be a catastrophic turn of events?)

“Although,” she added, the faintest blush gathering on her cheeks, “for what it’s worth, and I hope you don’t mind me saying so, I’m a big fan of the films - well, the first one, so far - and I think you two make a beautiful couple.”

“Thank you,” he said, unable to hold back the goofy grin that her words garnered, “I really appreciate it.”

“Lee,” Richard wailed from behind the door, and this time Ingrid did laugh out loud.

“You better go back in there, just in case he tries to make a break for it and come looking for you.”

The prospect of Richard lurching around the hospital, ricocheting off the walls and braying Lee’s name, was not enticing to say the least. Fortunately, when he opened the door – after thanking Ingrid profusely again, for everything – Richard hadn’t moved.

“Where’d you go?” he asked, plaintive, like Lee had abandoned him for years instead of a few minutes.

“Just to talk to the nurse,” he reassured him. They could discuss the contents of the conversation once Richard was slightly more conscious.

“My face hurts.”

“I know, love. It’ll be better soon.”

“Hmph,” Richard mumbled, clearly not willing to take his word for it, reaching out one hand until Lee intertwined their fingers and then settling back onto the pillows with what probably would have been a satisfied smile if not for the swelling of his face and jaw.

“Rich,” he asked softly, “why did you pretend you were okay and the drugs had worn off?”

He blinked, confused, like the answer was obvious. “Because I wanted to go home.”

The total honesty in his tone twisted something in Lee’s chest, but before he had a chance to respond, there was a knock at the door and a young male doctor walked in.

“Mr Armitage, Mr Pace – I’m Dr Daniels. I understand we have a possible concussion here?”

He ran through his list of symptoms, Richard denying any nausea or double vision and able to give the date and his location clearly. And then –

“Do you know who this is?” Dr Daniels asked, gesturing to Lee, who had been hovering anxiously, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Richard beamed proudly. “That’s Lee. Lee Grinner Pace. He’s my boyfriend.”

Lee wanted to burst into tears.

It was literally the first time he had ever heard Richard say those words, and he was quite unprepared for the surge of emotion that they caused, hitting him in the chest with such force that he had to reach for the back of the chair next to the bed to steady himself. It made him want to lunge on Richard and squeeze him like he would never let go and kiss him until they were both breathless, and he probably would have had there not been so many things in his way (the head injury, the state of his mouth, the doctor standing next to the bed, the fact that Richard was still so blazed that he wouldn’t remember any of it).

But still.

_Boyfriend._

Oh, they had come so far.

To Dr Daniels’ credit, though, he didn’t look fazed by the proclamation at all.

“And he’s really, really gorgeous,” Richard added helpfully, “don’t you agree?”

Hopefully Ingrid had briefed Dr Daniels about his sudden desire to over-share as well.

“Look,” he said, pulling the collar of his shirt to one side, “look what he gave me last night with that amazing mouth of his.”

“Oh my god,” Lee muttered again. The hickey on Richard’s collarbone that he’d left the previous night – it might have been languorous sex, but that never stopped Richard begging for Lee to mark him in as many places as possible, so long as they wouldn’t be publicly visible – was still dark and obvious and most definitely not something that could be explained away with an innocuous excuse that didn’t involve Lee’s lips and teeth.

“He gave me something else with it, too, and does so quite often,” he whispered to the doctor, “but I don’t kiss and tell – or, you know, do ‘other things’ and tell.”

Dr Daniels was keeping a remarkably straight face. Maybe there was a class at med school that taught them how to not react to the garbage that poured out of the mouths of people under the influence.

Much to Lee’s continued mortification, Richard proceeded to subject the doctor to a further monologue about his mouth, keeping it up even as he had his reactions tested.

“And his hands,” he continued, “I really fucking love his hands.”

Lee was pleased, in some irrational way, that he kept coming back to those same two features. He knew Richard liked them, but he didn’t think he’d ever been quite so vocal about it before. (He filed the knowledge away for future reference, sure that he would be able to come up with a way to exploit it for their mutual pleasure one day in the not too distant future. The bathroom hand job had obviously been a step in the right direction, rather than the end point.)

Finally, Dr Daniels stood up, tucking his little penlight back into his pocket and turning to Lee.

“He looks okay for now,” he told him, “and to be honest, I would be surprised if he isn’t back to normal pretty quickly, but we’ll get you to hang around a bit longer just in case – things will be much clearer once the sedation has worn off. Ingrid will have told you, I’m sure, that we can’t be certain whether his current state should be attributed to his reaction to the drugs or the head knock, but I suspect it’s much more likely to be the former. It’s alright if he has a little sleep, and it looks like that’s going to end up happening pretty soon anyway,” he added, gesturing to Richard’s drooping eyelids, “but someone will come and check in on him every half hour or so. He should only sleep for a couple of hours at the most before someone wakes him up, just to check that everything’s all right and he can wake up normally. Assuming that he’s given the all-clear today, you’ll need to do that overnight as well.”

Richard was grumpy enough when he was woken up in the mornings against his will – Lee was not looking forward to having to get him conscious multiple times during the night just for the sake of it.

Richard blinked up at him dolefully from the bed. He’d been very quiet for the last few minutes but didn’t appear to be paying attention to the conversation at all, especially since he was still looking like he was struggling to stay awake, and Lee wondered whether they’d heard the last of the inappropriate comments.

They hadn’t.

“Lee,” he complained, stretching the word out into a long whine, “I’m really horny.”

Oh, they definitely hadn’t.

“That should wear off in an hour or two, as well,” the doctor smirked.

“The lack of filter or the other thing?” Lee asked drily, this time earning a laugh. “The talking. No promises with respect to the latter, unfortunately. But, ah… He does have a head injury, so…”

Lee flushed at the implication. “No sex in the hospital bed. Got it.”

“Hey, you’d be surprised at how often it happens. Not always the ones you’d expect, either. Then again, looks like he might not be asking for long,” he added, with a nod to Richard, who had settled back into a prone position. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling but they kept slipping closed, each blink lasting a fraction longer than the one before.

As soon as the door clicked shut, though, he turned to Lee with a grin (albeit a slightly woozy one) on his face.

“He’s gone,” he whispered theatrically, “so you can take your clothes off now.”

The effect was marred somewhat by how much he was struggling to get each word out – not to mention the huge yawn that followed them – only serving to reemphasise just how drugged up he still was (and how doing as he suggested would be a terrible idea).

“I don’t think so, love,” Lee sighed, bending over to smooth his hair back off his head, making sure to avoid the bandage on his forehead. Richard reached a hand up, wrapping his fingers around Lee’s wrist and tugging insistently.

“Come on,” he coaxed, “just a quick one before the doctor comes back. It’ll be good, promise.”

It certainly had the potential to be good. Lee could very easily take advantage of Richard’s state – he was sure to be vocal and demanding, and Lee could make him articulate wishes and kinks (that he would never normally even contemplate sharing) without so much as a blush. (He had learned a while ago that there were at least a couple of those that had been bubbling away under the surface, and extracting them had been one of his greatest achievements to date, and yet he was sure that there were so many more.) But even with those facts lingering in the back of his mind – no, he wasn’t going to go there, for so many reasons.

“Come on,” Richard repeated, using his grip on Lee’s wrist to pull him closer and reaching for his belt buckle with his other hand – but he couldn’t quite get it, his fingers grasping uselessly, not dexterous enough to pop it open, and he scowled as Lee stepped backwards, infuriatingly out of reach.

“Lee,” he whined, “stop being a spoilsport. I swear you don’t usually make me work this hard for it.”

Christ above.

Lee had a sinking feeling that Richard wasn’t going to give up on his goal without some sort of intervention – he certainly wasn’t going to concede on his own that maybe they could give the sex a miss for now.

Although, considering Richard’s slow blinking (which had slowed down even more as they eyed each other) and how close to asleep he appeared to be despite his best intentions, there had to be another way out, just as Dr Daniels had implied.

All Lee needed was to buy himself some time.

“Just – stay there for a minute, would you? I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“I love surprises,” Richard said thickly, “what is it?”

“Gimme a sec,” he repeated, “actually, it’s going to take a bit of time to get ready, so can you maybe just count to a hundred? No, a thousand, just to be on the safe side. Do it nice and loud, so I can tell how much longer I’ve got.”

“Okay,” Richard grinned, “but be quick.” Just to drive the point home, he reached for his own fly (he hadn’t worn a belt, so that was one less challenge to deal with), sliding his hand downwards and giving himself an obvious squeeze and Lee a lazy smirk as he sidled out of the room.

And Lee – well, he pulled the door closed, and then he waited.

Impressively, Richard got past a hundred before his words started to slur unrecognisably, then getting quieter and quieter and eventually stopping entirely. Lee gave him another couple of minutes, just to make sure, before peeking into the room again – and, just as he’d expected, Richard had passed out. He lay spreadeagled on his back, mouth gaping open and hand still down the front of his pants.

Lee just grinned, closing the door behind him and stepping closer to the bed, doing up his pants again and pulling the blanket up to his chin before settling into the comfortable visitor’s chair.

And then he waited.


	2. Chapter 2

The chair had been comfortable – more comfortable than Lee had expected, more comfortable than a bedside seat in any other hospital would have been – and he wasn’t entirely surprised to find that he had managed to drift off as well, given their early start and the stress of the morning all round. He woke up when Richard did the same with a very unhappy sounding groan, rolling over and frowning at the unfamiliar room.

“Hey,” Lee said softly, and Richard squinted at him. “Lee?”

“Yeah, I’m right here.” He pulled his chair closer, taking Richard’s hand in his. “Are you okay?”

“What happened?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

He frowned. “I’m not sure. Going to see the dentist? Yeah,” he added, his face clearing slightly, “and he had glasses and a really impressive monobrow. So… where am I now?”

“Still at the hospital. They wanted to keep you under observation for a while, because you didn’t react very well to the sedation they gave you, and when you got out of the chair you fell and hit your head.”

Richard stared at him blankly, raising a confused hand to pat at his temple until he found the edge of the bandaging. “Did I?”

“Mm. Right there, and then on the back as well, apparently.” He hoped it wasn’t a very bad sign that Richard remembered none of the activities he’d engaged in during his sedated phase.

“Well, I guess that kind of makes sense, since everything hurts like fuck. I feel like I’ve been hit in the back of the head with an axe, and my jaw is killing me. D’you reckon they’ll give me some better drugs for my injuries?”

“I think you’ve had enough drugs for the meantime,” Lee muttered drily, “but yeah, I’m sure they’ll give you something nice and strong to take home.”

Richard continued to perk up over the next few minutes, and the longer he talked, the more certain Lee was that he was back to normal and there were no lasting consequences from either his over-sedation or head injury – beyond the lack of recollection which, in retrospect, might not have been such a bad thing.

But it wasn’t to be.

“I had lots of really strange dreams,” he said suddenly, an amused beam spreading over his face, “and they were all set here, weirdly enough. There were a bunch of nurses and doctors and I couldn’t stop telling them all the things I loved about you. I seem to remember being particularly fixated on your mouth. And I think we were playing hide and seek, because you made me count to a thousand, but I’m not sure if I ever actually got there or went to find you.”

Lee did his best to smother his smile, he really did, but he failed spectacularly, Richard watching in confusion as it mutated into a grin and then a belly-deep laugh.

“Oh, Rich, I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“It’s just, well, um…”

“What?” he repeated. Lee braced himself. It was going to have to come out sooner or later, but it was entirely possible that Richard wasn’t going to see the funny side, especially to begin with. Oh, shit, he shouldn’t have laughed.

“None of that was a dream.”

The colour drained from Richard’s face so fast that Lee thought he was going to pass out again. “Rich,” he pleaded, squeezing his hand, “it’s okay, deep breaths, talk to me, stay with me.”

“Oh my god,” Richard groaned, his whole body slumping with embarrassment, “tell me you’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.”

Lee just shook his head.

And Richard shut down.

In the space of about five seconds, the horror disappeared from his face to be replaced by something more neutral and thoughtful. Lee knew that face all too well – it was the one he wore when he was retreating into himself, shutting Lee out and letting his fears overwhelm him. He’d seen it a lot in the early days, even if Richard hadn’t realised – in fact, he’d worn the expression on set so much that the rest of the cast probably assumed it was his default.

It wasn’t.

It was a sign that he was feeling significantly out of his depth and didn’t know how to handle it.

“Lee,” he said quietly, “why don’t you go and get a coffee?”

It was a dismissal.

_I don’t want you around right now. I can’t deal with having you next to me. Please go. And don’t come back until I’m ready._

“Sure thing,” Lee said easily, not wanting to let his tone betray his emotions and remembering from previous visits that there was a great coffee machine tucked around the corner behind the reception desk. “You get some more rest, yeah? And you’ve got your phone, so if you want me to come back, just call and I’ll be here.”

“Of course,” Richard replied distantly, still refusing to look at him and clearly (to Lee, at least) drowning in his thoughts. Lee bit back his anxious sigh until the door had clicked shut behind him, and only then did he let himself slump against the wall with worry.

He took his time at the coffee machine, making a perfect cup (as perfect as he could, anyway) and striking up conversation with the girl at the front desk while he waited for it to cool – and then he roamed the halls impatiently, wondering if he should leave the building altogether and how long it would take before Richard wanted him around again.

It was the slowest cup of coffee he’d ever drunk – but just when he was contemplating whether he should go and make another, maybe return to the magazine he’d been reading in the waiting room when Ingrid first came to get him, his phone beeped.

_New message: Rich  
Please don’t tell me you’ve abandoned me here without a ride home – I’m pretty sure they’re not going to let me get behind the wheel of a car…_

The words were followed by a variety of vaguely relevant emojis (anything that looked remotely medical, several cars, and a variety of stressed, anxious and unhappy faces) – and that told Lee everything he needed to know, because Richard only employed emojis when he was feeling particularly playful, as opposed to in the throes of a complete meltdown about their relationship.

Just in case his mood wasn’t clear enough, though, the next text drove the point home.

_New message: Rich  
PS. Sorry for being such an unreasonable git x_

And sure enough, when Lee re-entered the room, Richard was back.

The man in the bed was the Richard who was pleased to see him, would look at him and touch him and accept his affection. _This_ was the Richard who would greet him late at night at Stone St, turning up on his trailer doorstep just when he was about to write off the evening, falling into his arms and bed and stealing his breath and sanity with every kiss. And it was this Richard who’d been waking up next to him almost every day so far this year, the one he was building a life with, the one he was so thoroughly terrified of losing.

It wasn’t only Richard, though – no, he had an audience. Lee didn’t know the man – mid-fifties, thinning hair, sharp grey eyes, exuding authority despite his small (by their standards, anyway) stature – but the expensive cut of the suit he was wearing made it pretty clear that he wasn’t a doctor.

“Mr Pace,” he said, holding out a hand for a confused Lee to shake, “Rob McLaren. I’m the chief executive of this hospital.”

“Nice to meet you,” Lee said automatically, his gaze flickering between him and Richard, sitting up in the bed and somehow maintaining a commanding presence despite the swollen jaw and bandaged head, his gaze clear. He had very definitely finished digesting what Lee had told him, and had decided to take action accordingly.

Sure enough –

“Rob and I have just been discussing the particular weight given to patient confidentiality here.”

“I see.”

“And he understands perfectly the consequences that will follow should any of this morning’s events find their way to any outside source.”

Rob just nodded seriously.

“With respect, Mr Pace, we have seen all sorts here. We have had patients whose stories have been absolutely career-ending, significantly more scandalous than your relationship and worth significantly more to the media, and yet they have never left these walls. Not that I would want to suggest in any way that your privacy or your relationship is any less important to us, of course. But discretion is our business. Our staff understand that very well. And I give you my word that none of them would even consider divulging any of your personal information.”

It was the same message that Ingrid had given him – and while he had definitely taken solace in her words, they had an additional ring of truth when they came from the mouth of the chief executive.

“And,” Rob continued, this time directing his words at Richard, “we will be waiving your medical bills today, as a gesture of good faith. We do very much value having you both as clients and would hate for you to leave with anything other than the most positive of impressions of our business.”

“Thank you,” Richard said imperiously (and something about his tone told Lee that he hadn’t quite grasped just how much money they were talking about – it was his first real experience with the American healthcare system, after all). Rob got the hint, though – he pressed a business card with his personal number on it into Lee’s hand, telling them to call him at any time if they had any questions or concerns, and after another round of hand-shaking left them alone again.

“You didn’t have to threaten him,” Lee chastised, settling back into his chair, even though he was secretly grateful for Richard’s slightly over the top reaction – summoning the chief executive and telling him that he would sue him into the ground if anyone breathed a word about their relationship probably wasn’t how most people would have behaved.

Then again, he wouldn’t really have expected anything less.

“I just wanted to drive the point home,” Richard admitted, reaching for Lee’s hand and tugging him forward, lacing their fingers together, “and I just… I’m not ready for the whole world to know yet. I don’t want my big mouth stopping us taking our time with this.”

“I know,” Lee soothed, squeezing his hand, “but it’s all going to be okay.”

And Richard squeezed back.

“I’m sorry for freaking out.”

“Don’t apologise – there’s nothing to apologise for. And I’m sorry for laughing,” Lee countered, “I should have broken it to you more gently.”

“Don’t,” Richard echoed, “plus, I don’t blame you for finding it funny. God knows I would have, too, if I wasn’t such a paranoid idiot. I’m sure I’ll be able to look back on this in a decade and laugh about it, too.”

A decade.

Lee liked the sound of that.

“You put me down as your emergency contact,” he remembered out loud – thoughts of the future clearly having prompted him to recall what Ingrid had told him – and Richard peered up at him, slightly sheepish.

“I did. Do you… do you mind?”

“Mind? No. No, no, definitely not. Quite the opposite, to be honest.”

“’Kay,” Richard murmured, looking more than a little pleased with himself until something contemplative darted across his face. Lee knew that look very well – it meant there was something more he wanted to say, but he wasn’t quite sure how Lee was going to react.

“One other thing, though,” he continued after a few seconds, sure enough, his eyes fixed on the blanket and very definitely not looking at Lee, “I sort of have a confession to make – about before, I mean.”

“What’s that?”

“I remember realising, on some subconscious level, what I was doing – shouting about you to everyone in earshot – and understanding that it meant that people would know we were together. And, well…”

“Yes?” Lee prompted, and Richard looked up at him again with a bashful little smile that made Lee want to hug him.

“And I remember that it felt really, really good.”

Lee bit down on his lip to try and tamp down the triumph that he could feel spreading over his face, instead leaning forward to rest his free elbow on the bed and his chin in his palm.

“Well, I am really, really glad to hear that. And you know what? It’s going to feel like that next time, as well, and the time after that and the time after that – whether they happen next week, in a few months, or in a few years. Whenever you’re ready, I can promise you that it’s going to feel amazing.”

Richard just shook his head in semi-serious bewilderment. “I don’t understand why you’re so patient with me.”

“You know why. Because I love you. You are so precious to me, and we can take things as fast or as slow as you need to, so long as I still get to come home to you at the end of the day and tell you and show you how much you mean to me.”

“Goddamn, you’re lovely,” Richard breathed, “I have no idea what I did in a past life to deserve you, but I’m so bloody grateful.”

Lee just huffed out a little laugh, squeezing Richard’s hand tighter.

“You know what else you said?”

“What…?” His voice was understandably hesitant, like he was waiting for Lee to drop another bombshell.

“You told the doctor I was your boyfriend.”

“I didn’t know that was in dispute,” Richard teased gently, not quite grasping the significance of the words.

“It’s just that, um, you’ve never introduced me to anyone like that before.”

“Haven’t I?” Richard furrowed his brow, clearly replaying all the times he’d told people about their relationship and coming up empty. He’d said that he and Lee were together, and that they were in love – but never that B-word that made Lee’s heart feel like it was going to beat its way right out of his chest with happiness.

Lee shook his head. “And so hearing you say it… Well, it was pretty special to me, to be honest.”

“I barely remember a time when I _didn’t_ think of you as my boyfriend… No, actually, scratch that. I remember exactly when it started. It was maybe three weeks after this,” he gestured to the space between them, “happened. I’d had a really draining day and was feeling like shit, but I came to see you that night anyway. I spent the whole time worrying that I was irritating you by being such a prick, but when I tried to leave and take my black mood with me…”

“I remember.”

Richard had looked particularly defeated that evening, and all Lee had wanted to do was help. He’d guessed that trying to instigate sex probably wasn’t the best idea, so he’d grabbed his softest blanket from the bed (Aidan and Dean had found them at a store in the city, bought two, and paraded them around Stone St until most of the rest of the cast had caved and gone to get their own), wrapped them both in it, and did his best to keep the conversation light and cheerful and interspersed with the odd gentle nuzzle and kiss. But he hadn’t had any luck coaxing any positive emotion from Richard – not until he started to make his excuses, trying to get up to, in his words, leave Lee in peace.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lee had told him, “you’re staying right here with me.”

“So you put me to bed,” Richard continued, “cuddled up to me even though I had really cold feet, and held me until I felt less awful. I woke up in the middle of the night to leave as usual, but you were already awake, and you wouldn’t let me apologise for being a grumpy old man, let alone go back to my own bed for another few hours. And then…” His face softened further, like he was drawing on a particularly happy memory. “And then you kissed me like you were in love with me.”

“I’m pretty sure I _was_ in love with you, Rich. I just didn’t want to say it first in case I scared you away.”

“You wouldn’t have,” he replied, thoroughly unconvincing. Lee just patted his hip through the blanket affectionately. He wasn’t going to lie – the depth of Richard’s recollection of the night was unexpected to say the least. He certainly hadn’t given away at the time the seismic shift that was going on in his head.

“Anyway,” Richard continued, both of them knowing that it wasn’t worth descending into even a joking squabble about whether he would have run if Lee had been the one to share his feelings first, “I suppose I’ve thought of you as my boyfriend for a very long time now, and I’m sorry for not communicating that more clearly. I guess I didn’t realise it was something you needed to hear, and that was stupid on my part. But trust me,” he added, “you won’t be able to stop me saying it now.”

“Thank you,” Lee said softly, the warmth in his chest showing no signs of abating whatsoever. “Oh, and by the way…”

“Mm?”

“Ingrid thinks we look good together.”

Richard frowned. “Who’s Ingrid?”

“The nurse who was subjected to the majority of your ramblings.”

“Christ,” he muttered, clearly reliving what little detail he could remember of events before looking up at Lee again hopefully, “but she said that? She really said that?”

“She told me, and I quote, that we make a beautiful couple.”

“Huh,” Richard murmured, in what looked like wonder, before his tone turned markedly more mischievous. “Well, I can only assume I’m hot enough for the two of us, and I cancel you out somehow.”

“Excuse me? You were drooling and slurring your words, and you couldn’t stand up by yourself. I think that made me the better looking one by default.”

Richard stared him down for a second or two before he started to laugh, a quiet snicker that grew in volume until it was bordering on inappropriate, especially considering that they were in a hospital. And Lee joined in – he just couldn’t help it – wishing he could take a picture of that carefree face and frame it.

“So, boyfriend…?” Richard asked, once he’d recovered, drawing the word out in a poor imitation of Lee’s accent and clearly enjoying the goofy grin that Lee gave in response as his stomach lurched in that lovely, exhilarating way.

(Was the word really going to have this effect on him every time Richard said it?)

“Yeah?”

“Any chance you’d be so kind as to lean in so I can kiss you?”

He offered a wide, hopeful smile – and that was when Lee realised that his gums had started bleeding again, streaking his front teeth with red smudges.

“Oh boy,” Lee sighed, “I think you need to rearrange the bandages in your mouth. No, don’t touch them – god, Rich, use your tongue, not your fingers.”

“That’s what he said,” Richard beamed triumphantly (the grin only growing in size when Lee laughed again despite himself) but did as he was told, keeping his expectant gaze fixed on Lee until he was done. “So, now a kiss?”

“Not while you’ve got huge open wounds in there, love.” God forbid he do anything to hinder Richard’s recovery – he’d never be able to forgive himself. No, he was going to stick to slow and gentle and platonic until Richard was better, with no exchanges of bodily fluids whatsoever. So he pressed his lips to Richard’s forehead instead, a poor substitute – but Richard accepted it anyway, humming with satisfaction, exhaling long and relaxed. Yes, it was all going to be okay.

“I do have one question, though.”

“Mm?”

“Why didn’t you tell me to shut up?”

“Oh, I did. Believe me, I did. Sorry, babe, but you were pretty unstoppable. You had things to say and you didn’t really care who heard them.”

“Yeah? To be honest, other than something about your mouth, I don’t really remember the finer details.”

“Well, there was definitely more than the one comment about my mouth, and my hands, and this,” he added, pressing a gentle finger to the bruise on Richard’s collarbone, “and you also announced quite loudly that I was a god in the bedroom.”

“Jesus, did I really? I don’t know what I was thinking,” Richard smirked.

“Oh, I think you weren’t thinking at all, and that’s exactly my point – you know objectively that I’m amazing in bed,” Lee teased, “and when you were high there was nothing stopping you from sharing it. Drunken words – well, drugged words, in your case – are nothing more than sober thoughts, and so on.”

“I wouldn’t say I’ve ever held back on telling you things like that,” Richard mused, “but actually, now that you mention it, you know what else I remember from before?”

“What?”

“I remember being really, really horny.”

God, even sober Richard was still hell-bent on getting laid.

“Nice try, stud, but the doctor said no sex in the hospital bed.”

He pouted – a look which, under any other circumstances, would have resulted in Lee caving. “Not even a quick hand job to take the edge off?”

“Absolutely not, love, sorry.”

“This is bullshit,” he grumbled, “well, whatever. I guess I can hold out until we get home – just.”

After another round of tests, Richard was given the all clear and told he could go home – so long as he wasn’t the one driving, of course. (The doctor had even given him the four offending teeth in a little bag – Lee had insisted on keeping them for entertainment’s sake, while Richard had claimed that he never wanted to see them again.) Lee had stopped en route to grab them a smoothie each, leaving Richard in the car and staring mutinously out the window (though the sour expression was somewhat marred by his still-swollen jaw and the neat white bandage adorning his temple) as the pain began to build again at an almost alarmingly rapid rate. His mood darkened further when he realised that while Lee had bought his favourite flavour, he wasn’t allowed to drink it until they got home because sucking on a straw would dislodge the clots that were beginning to form in the cavities where his teeth had been. He scowled at Lee for the rest of the drive.

It was almost a good thing that the pain had come roaring back, because it meant that sex had dropped right down his list of priorities in favour of more drugs. He let Lee strip him down and dress him in his old pyjama bottoms – never mind the fact it was only early afternoon – clearly feeling too rough to even summon an inappropriate comment or three, snatched the painkillers out of Lee’s hand and downed them with a very careful swig of water before lying back on the couch with a pitiful moan.

“It hurts.”

“I know, babe. They’ll kick in soon. Do you want some smoothie in the meantime?”

By the time he’d finished half the drink (which he spooned out of the plastic cup mouthful by mouthful), the furrows in his brow had mostly been smoothed away, and he nodded when Lee asked if he was feeling any better.

“That’s good,” he encouraged, “that’s really good. Now – something more to drink, ice pack, shower, cuddles, sleep? You can have whatever you want. Just tell me and it’s yours.”

“Whatever I want?” Richard grinned suggestively, blatantly eyeing Lee’s crotch and then raising his gaze again with a look that told Lee that the painkillers were working just fine, and made him wonder for a second whether the sedatives that had made Richard so lewd and demanding had worn off at all.

“Other than that.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

As he’d promised, he spent the rest of the day waiting on Richard hand and foot. The gum bleeding didn’t take too long to die down (even if it hadn’t stopped entirely), but he kept up a steady stream of ice packs and elephant-strength painkillers and liquids and soft foods and frequent salt water rinses. He confined Richard to the couch and they were comfortably lazy, talking and napping and reading and watching movies in their softest, oldest clothes.

And there was definitely, unequivocally, none of the sex that Richard had been demanding so vocally.

But it wasn’t for want of trying.

He spent a large chunk of the afternoon deliberately pressing Lee’s buttons (at least, as many of them as he could without moving too much), teasing touches and whispered suggestions interspersed with the odd outright request. But no, Lee was determined. Something anxious and protective had flared in him when he’d seen Richard all helpless with sedation, and it had only grown in intensity as he became more and more miserable with pain. He’d seen him nursing various scrapes and bruises on set, of course, but this was definitely a level up, and the worry he’d felt then didn’t even compare to what he felt now. It made him want to wrap Richard in cotton wool, treat him like the most fragile antique, not let him out of his sight – and definitely, definitely, not do anything that could hurt him in any way.

That most definitely included sex. And considering that his mouth was still full of open wounds that could get infected very, very quickly, it also included kissing.

Needless to say, Richard was not impressed.

He’d given up – albeit unwillingly – by early evening, clearly having decided that he should make the most of the endless cuddles while Lee was offering them. He rearranged Lee so he was lying down, his head and shoulders propped up on the arm of the couch and his legs splayed, and then made himself at home between them, the back of his head resting on a pillow on top of Lee’s sternum. (He’d discovered as soon as they’d settled on the couch that it hurt too much to lie on his side, no matter how soft the pillow cushioning his jaw was; the bruised back of his head was a marginally better alternative.) Lee, of course, hadn’t been able to resist running his fingers over and through his hair and down his neck, enjoying being able to feel, quite literally, the tension and discomfort draining out of him as he purred and hummed in satisfaction – and it was only a few minutes before he was asleep again

By the time he woke up, it was dark outside and Lee was starting to get a rather stiff neck – not that he was complaining. Having Richard’s warmth pressed up against him was not something he would ever pass up on – and having Richard doze against his chest, completely unguarded, would never fail to remind him of that night when everything changed. It was a fond memory that he loved to take out to reconsider, not least because he had been utterly blindsided by Richard’s change of heart, the one he’d desperately hoped for but had never expected to actually arrive. No, the way that Richard had looked at him and touched him and fallen asleep in his arms and _loved_ him that night had been the beginning of something much greater than even Lee had foreseen when he leaned in for that first kiss.

Richard shifted in Lee’s embrace, giving him a sleepy smile that disappeared swiftly as he pressed his fingers to his jaw.

“No better?”

“Nuh.”

“What about your head?”

Another inquisitive touch, and another grimace. “Hurts.”

“More drugs?”

“Mmm.”

Lee dosed him up again just before they went to sleep, offering a careful scalp massage once they were both settled in bed. The speed at which Richard agreed – not to mention the rumbling little groans the press of Lee’s fingers was earning – made Lee feel like an idiot for not suggesting it sooner. Richard insisted that it was doing wonders for the headache and that he _absolutely should not stop_ – and while Lee attributed the turnaround in his pain levels more sensibly to the drugs, he was more than happy to do as Richard asked.

Richard was less than thrilled, however, with the alarm that Lee had set to go off every two hours so he could wake him up and check his head injury. The doctor had armed him with a list of concussion symptoms to check for, and he’d felt particularly mean turning the light on and off constantly, dragging Richard out of his pain-free sleep, but he knew he would never forgive himself if something was wrong and he’d missed it. But Richard passed each time with flying colours, and at five am Lee gave up, turning the alarm off altogether.

He awoke again late morning to find Richard tangled around him – thoroughly trapped in place by those long limbs as he nuzzled into the crook of Lee’s neck happily – and a very insistent erection pressed against his ass. 

“Morning, gorgeous,” he murmured, and Lee relaxed into the embrace for a full five seconds before remembering.

“Oh no you don’t,” he laughed, squeezing out of Richard’s embrace and out of the bed, “don’t you try to take advantage of me when I’m asleep. You know that’s off the menu at the moment. Come on, sit up and I’ll bring you some more drugs.”

Richard swallowed the pills willingly enough, but the scowl on his face didn’t disappear – instead, it grew more pronounced as Lee pulled on yesterday’s clothes for a quick run to the store.

“Do you want anything?”

“No,” he muttered petulantly.

“More strawberry yoghurt, got it.” He’d picked it up on a whim, part of a wide selection of soft foods he’d purchased in anticipation of the surgery, but hadn’t expected Richard to take to it quite as much as he had – he’d ended up devouring the whole thing in one sitting, looking extremely put out when Lee told him there was no more.

Richard just grunted in response – Lee figured that was all the thanks he was going to get for a while – rearranging the pillows and lying down again.

“I’ll be back in a minute – be good.”

The apartment was silent when he returned, a bag full of snacks in one hand and the mail between his teeth, and he wondered whether Richard had gone back to sleep.

He hadn’t.

He was still mostly lying down in the bed, on his back with his knees bent, the blankets pushed back around his ankles. That wasn’t the part that made Lee stop in the doorway, mouth going dry and colour rushing to his cheeks and something curling slow in the pit of his stomach – no, it was the fact that the bottle of lube that usually lived in the bedside cabinet was next to him and his hand was stuffed down the front of his pyjama pants, moving in a steady and entirely unsubtle rhythm.

“Richard,” Lee croaked, frozen in the doorway, “what are you doing?”

Like he didn’t know. Like he couldn’t tell.

Richard opened his eyes slowly – he’d clearly heard Lee get back, and he clearly had absolutely no objections to him knowing what he’d been up to in his absence. It was just another weapon in his arsenal – the knowledge that Lee was incapable of rational thought while watching Richard touch himself.

This time was no exception.

“I’ve got to tell you something, babe,” he announced, his hand slowing to a more teasing pace as he fixed his gaze on Lee. “I am grumpy and in pain, but I’m also horny as fuck, and you won’t touch me – not like I need you to – and it’s doing my head in.”

“I don’t want to touch you because I’m afraid I’ll hurt you,” Lee protested – but damn, if that matter of fact tone wasn’t something else, and it was almost embarrassing how fast his good intentions were beginning to float out the window, replaced by thoughts of a much more indecent nature. (The fact that Richard’s hand was still on his cock was really not helping matters at all.)

“You won’t hurt me.”

“I might,” he said stubbornly. “Plus, what if, you know, there’s some bacteria or something in my mouth that gets into yours and then you get an infection? That would be excruciating, and I definitely don’t want to see you in this kind of pain again.”

“Lee, as much as I love kissing you, it’s not a prerequisite to sex.”

“But –”

“And,” Richard continued, determined, “I can think of a whole host of positions that don’t require our mouths to be anywhere near each other, since that’s obviously at least in part what you’re worried about. So you have two choices: you can stand there and watch as I get myself off, or you can take your clothes off and fuck me.”

“I can’t,” he insisted, and Richard rolled his eyes. “Oh my god, Lee, I only had a few teeth out. It wasn’t an organ transplant.”

“Rich, you were high out of your mind on the sedatives. The nurse had to come and tell me that not only had they basically given you an overdose but that they thought you’d concussed yourself. And it freaked me out, okay? Just – put yourself in my shoes for a minute. It was awful. When the nurse came to get me from the waiting room, she looked so serious that I thought she was about to tell me you’d died. And believe it or not, worrying like that is not exactly a turn on. I just want to make sure you’re okay, and I don’t think anything energetic is going to help on that front. Just – let me look after you, please?”

“I’m sorry,” Richard said softly, something sympathetic darting across his face.

“God, Rich, don’t apologise. There’s nothing to be sorry for. None of this was your fault.”

“And yet you’re punishing me for it,” he noted with a smirk that told Lee he was only having him on and still extremely determined to get what he wanted. “Plus, your point about being energetic? Come on, I know you know how to be gentle – don’t you remember those nights when we were filming the battle scenes?”

Lee did.

Lee remembered very well.

Richard would come to him, as he always did. They would spend the first hour or so curled together on the too-short bed, trading quiet words about their days and the bits of them that ached the most. That would eventually turn into soft kisses – the kind that always left Lee feeling slightly dazed and unsteady – which, in turn, would end in sex: Lee’s thrusts slow and languorous, Richard palming the skin of his chest and shoulders and neck and staring up at him in wonder, as they avoided each other’s sorest spots until they were too absorbed in each other to remember that they’d ever been hurting at all.

“Besides,” he added, jerking Lee out of his reverie, “if it’s pain that you’re worried about… well, are you really going to deprive me of nature’s most effective painkiller?”

“Oh my god,” Lee laughed, despite himself, “you’re insatiable.”

“And you are wearing way too many clothes,” Richard countered, “so – what’s it going to be?”

Oh, he could feel himself caving. He was still terrified of hurting Richard, it was true, but (and he hated himself for it) that fear was tempered with arousal and he could feel his cock continuing to swell, now straining against his briefs and clearly more than ready to go. Richard had learned very quickly how to press his buttons and wasn’t above using that knowledge to get what he wanted – but this was probably going to be his greatest triumph to date.

“You’ll tell me if you want to stop, or if I’m hurting you in any way.”

“Yes,” he breathed, “yes, god, Lee, _please_.”

The tone of that last word was the final nail in the coffin of Lee’s self-control, and by the time he’d shed his clothes (not too fast, wondering if he could torture Richard for a little longer with his unhurried movements) Richard’s eyes were dark and focused on his hard, jutting cock.

“Let me just figure out how this is going to work,” he said, worrying his lip between his teeth, Richard’s comfort still very much at the forefront of his mind.

“Come on, Lee, I know you’re intimately familiar with the mechanics of sex.”

“Shut up,” he laughed, “just let me think. Okay, um – hands and knees, babe.”

Richard scrambled out of his pyjama pants faster than Lee had thought possible and it seemed like less than a second had passed before he was naked and in position, his head twisted over his shoulder to eye Lee expectantly.

“Now what?”

“Come on, Rich,” he smirked, unable to resist the temptation of using his previous words against him, “I know you’re intimately familiar with the mechanics of sex.”

“Well played,” Richard conceded, “but – _oh._ Like _that._ Okay then.”

Lee had squeezed his ass in both hands and bent his head, pressing the flat of his tongue to his entrance by way of a preview before using the tip to flicker over and around it, setting up an unrelenting rhythm but keeping his touch light until Richard was gasping and begging for more.

“Pass me the lube, would you?” he requested, and Richard’s hand scrabbled blindly in the blankets until it closed around the bottle, flinging it back at Lee desperately. He bit back a smile, coating his first finger and easing it inside, knuckle by knuckle, and then twisting slowly.

“Oh god, Lee, please fuck me,” Richard breathed.

“Patience,” he chided, glad that Richard couldn’t see his self-satisfied grin. He relished the cross groan he got as he pulled the finger out, only to add more lube and then a second finger, scissoring Richard open in earnest before reintroducing his tongue, pushing it in alongside his fingers, alternating between deliberate curls inside and hard little flicks against his rim. And god, Richard was just loving it, whining and moaning and arching his back, and it made Lee want so badly to speed things along.

But no, he could wait a little longer, especially when he was getting Richard to be so goddamn vocal.

“Oh, _fuck,_ ” he choked as Lee reached for his cock, his free hand forming a tight fist and beginning to stroke just the way he liked it. He worked his hand and fingers and tongue in tandem, the most overwhelming of collaborations, until Richard was a babbling mess – and then he slowed right down again, transitioning back to slow and gentle and waiting for the complaints that were sure to follow.

Sure enough – 

“Lee,” Richard groaned, pushing back on his hand and mouth in frustration and searching for more contact, more pressure, just _more,_ “don’t be such an asshole.”

Lee bit down on the litany of puns that threatened to pour out of his mouth.

“I’m not quite sure what you mean,” he teased, “am I doing an inadequate job?” Just to drive the point home, he crooked his fingers and pressed down on Richard’s prostate, earning an involuntary groan.

“I mean, it sure sounds like I’m not having a whole lot of success here,” he continued, starting to stroke relentlessly, Richard’s breaths coming in hoarse pants as he struggled to form words and then articulate them, “so maybe I should just keep going like this and see if you change your mind.”

“Oh my god, Lee,” he ground out through gritted teeth, “enough. I’m injured, and you said that I could have whatever I want.”

“And what is it that you want?”

“I want you to stop fucking teasing and put that cock in me.”

The cock in question twitched impatiently, and Lee had to fight to keep his tone light and amused when his body was telling him desperately to stop messing around and just fuck him already.

“You know I can’t resist you when you ask so charmingly.”

Besides, both of them were certainly physically ready for it, and he didn’t want Richard to come before they got to the main event. Plus, his vocalisation of requests in general did all sorts of things to Lee – and Richard was fully aware of it, which had to be why he had tried it now.

“But seriously, though, I don’t want to –”

“Oh my god, Lee, you’re not going to hurt me, I promise. And if you don’t get on with it, I might die just to spite you.”

“Not funny,” he chastised, but was unable to stop himself smiling at the frustration in Richard’s tone.

“Please, Lee, I need you so bad.”

The number of times he said Lee’s name was always a good indicator of how riled up he was, even if he didn’t realise it himself. So Lee withdrew his fingers – painstakingly slowly, just to torment him a little longer – reaching for the lube and slicking himself up before spreading Richard’s cheeks and sliding in with one long, slow thrust, only stopping when he bottomed out, snugly encased in that tight heat that he was sure would never fail to blow his mind.

“Okay?” he checked, and Richard just grunted, clenching around him, a wordless command to get on with it – so he did, pulling back and then pushing in again, keeping his thrusts slow and steady, his eyes glued to Richard’s muscular shoulders and back and the enticing curve of his neck.

But slow and steady he could only do for so long, and as Richard squirmed and writhed, he felt his rhythm deepen and speed up until he had him trembling under his hands, both of them moaning with every thrust.

He experimented with different angles, shifting ever so slightly each time he filled Richard with his cock, his hands grasping his hips as he manipulated him in his mission to make him see stars. He knew when he’d found Richard’s prostate with the head of his cock because he let out a hoarse sob, dropping forwards onto his elbows – and he pursued that angle relentlessly, so focused on Richard’s pleasure that his own took him by surprise, and by the time he realised he was about to come it was too late to do anything to try and stop it. The world went white as his orgasm roared over him with an unexpected intensity, Richard clenching around him to squeeze out every last drop, pushing his hips back desperately and chasing his own release.

“Close, close, fuck, Lee – _no,_ ” he groaned in frustration as Lee, having given himself a few exquisite seconds to savour the sensation of spilling inside him (because hell, it never got old, and he was sure it was never going to), pulled out unexpectedly, “what are you doing? You – oh, _Christ.”_

Lee just grinned in triumph as he bent his head lower, Richard’s whole body tensing up in aroused anticipation at the first touch of his tongue, far gentler than what he clearly needed as it circled his entrance teasingly. He was slick and open from the fucking and it was easy for Lee to slide his tongue back inside to taste salt, one hand grasping Richard’s hip for leverage and the other snaking around to start working his cock again, still hanging hard and heavy between his legs.

It had been a surprising addition to their repertoire at the time, even more so due to the fact that it had been Richard’s suggestion in the first place (less unexpected, though, was how long it had taken for Lee to coax the details of the request out of him when he first brought it up and the lurid scarlet that his face had turned when he did so). It was the first serious indication that Lee had only just begun to scratch the surface of the things that Richard liked and wanted in the bedroom, if only he wasn’t so embarrassed about asking. Lee had no objections to it whatsoever, of course, especially once he’d learned how Richard responded to it, all squeaking begs and whines that made him never want to stop.

Richard’s legs were trembling from his imminent orgasm, his hips canting back against Lee’s face and then forward again, pushing his cock into Lee’s slick fist. “Close,” he repeated – that was the other thing, he would never last long when Lee upped the stakes like this, and there was always something so satisfying about getting him so riled up and out of control so quickly – “yes, _yes,_ Lee, more, ah –”

Lee pushed deeper still, the curls of his tongue synchronised with the movements of his hand, and Richard’s spine arched and he positively _wailed,_ a sound of overwhelmed pleasure, as he came, hot rushes landing on the blanket and leaving Lee’s fingers slippery as he worked him through, only slowing and stopping when he let out a final, sated exhale.

“Fucking hell,” he breathed, “god.”

“Did I hurt you?”

Now that they’d finally both come, Lee’s anxiety had come surging back in a matter of seconds. They’d been so preoccupied with the sex that he was positive some terrible pain was going to return with a vengeance, and it would all be his fault for being too rough, and –

But Richard just laughed – an exhausted laugh, but a laugh nonetheless, that set Lee’s mind at ease in an instant. Oh, thank god. He would have spent weeks beating himself up about it if Richard was anything less than tired and satisfied. “I feel fucking fantastic. Of course you didn’t bloody hurt me. Did I sound hurt at any stage of that?”

“Oh, I don’t know – you could have had the neighbours worried with that last yell.”

Richard grinned bashfully, too relaxed from the sex to be self-conscious. “What can I say? That tongue does things to me.”

“Oh, believe me, I’m well aware of that,” Lee smirked, “now, come on, let’s get you all cleaned up and back into bed – and I might just pop that blanket in the laundry.”

That got another dirty little snicker from Richard, and he let Lee lead him into the shower and soap him carefully, groaning happily as Lee washed his hair, strong fingers massaging his scalp (but avoiding the distinct egg at the base of his skull) as he worked the shampoo and conditioner through.

“Can I have a kiss yet?” he asked hopefully, winding his arms around Lee’s neck once he was finished.

“You absolutely cannot have a kiss yet, no,” Lee told him, still thinking of the horror of an infection – even more so now – and he pouted, partly teasing and partly not.

“I’m really not enjoying this.”

“Oh, that’s not what you were saying a few minutes ago,” Lee grinned, unable to help himself. “Plus, just think – in a few days, when you’re all better, I’ll take you out for our next date. Maybe a real fancy dinner – like that Italian place near Washington Square Park that you said you wanted to try, hmm? We can dress up all nice, and get a secluded table – I’m sure I’ve heard that they’re accommodating if you need a bit of privacy. And we can stuff ourselves full of pasta – and everything else on the menu, because it’s all meant to be incredible – and share mouthfuls of each other’s meals and drink lots of great wine, and hold hands,” he continued, getting more into the story as he went along, his palms idly caressing Richard’s waist, and basking in his growing warm smile. “And we can walk home slowly, maybe get ice cream on the way, if we’re not too full to ever eat again. And then we’ll get back here, and I’ll invite you in –”

“Yeah, you bloody better, it’s my house too,” Richard interjected with a smirk that made him lose his train of thought for a second.

“Shut up, don’t ruin my story,” he ordered, and Richard conceded but didn’t wipe the look off his face. “And I’ll pour you a drink and we’ll sit on the couch and talk and we’ll start to move closer and closer together, and I’ll sneak one arm around your shoulder really subtly – and you’ll notice, of course, but you won’t say anything because you’re far too adorable to call me out on it. And I won’t be able to stop looking at your mouth – which, as I’m sure you know, is thoroughly delectable – and eventually I’ll just lean in and kiss you, real soft and slow, and it’ll feel like a first kiss all over again.”

Richard glowed at him, his smirk having turned into something much less teasing and more warm and gooey and besotted. “Yeah, I like the sound of that.”

“Good.” He pressed his lips to Richard’s forehead, a tiny sigh escaping both of them at the contact.

“And then,” he added, like it was almost an afterthought, “I’ll take you to bed.”

“I like the sound of that, too.”

“You would, wouldn’t you – I mean,” he teased, grinning broadly at the way that the opportunity to remind Richard of his drugged-up burbling had presented itself, “I am a god in the bedroom, after all.”

“I’m never going to hear the end of that, am I?”

“Hmm… Nope, never.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, another beast. Whoops. Basically I'm just entertaining myself over here ;)
> 
> Tumblr is toutcequejesuispas if you want to say hi, and comments and kudos are loved :)


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